The Imagination of Trees: 2008-09-21

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

writing lull

The temporary unwelcome guest called The Migraine has significantly reduced writing output. The even less welcome guest called Paranoia reduced it even further. The new 'role' officially starts this Sunday, but then I am going on a course in Benedictine Spirituality and journalling at the Quaker Centre. I will write to you about it on my return, quite brilliantly if all goes well, disastrously if it doesn't. The course pack advises taking a favourite notebook or 'whatever you write with at present'. I thought about causing a stir and looking fantastically cool by taking my laptop and saying 'I Blog Darling'. Seemed a bit hypocritical since I've only just stopped referring to my Blog as my 'WebLog' and only learned what one was in April.
Anyway the official 'role' as Lay Pastor, already the subject of much confusion and mis-understanding and even some derision, starts on Sunday. The first week will be a bit of a flop, given that I will be 'comissioned' and then will disappear into the bosom of the Quakers is 'neither here nor there'(to borrow one of my Mum's favourite phrases). Full-scale psychological meltdown...and resultant Migraine already discussed swiftly followed glimpse of newsletter with my name on it under 'Team' as 'Hon. Lay Pastor': Mrs Jess Boulton.
You may remember a Post on here about something I couldn't share with you at that time, following the untimely conversation with God on the number 1E bus about boats, sea and fishes. You probably don't but my new 'Role' is its direct descendant. The pronouncement of Mrs Jess Boulton being a Lay Pastor has been met with a mixture of delight and dismay. The Verger thought that perhaps I was secretly affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists or the 'American' Church. This was because she had been Anglican and in this Church 'from the cradle', but had 'never heard of such a thing'. Would I, she wanted to know, 'be wearing Robes? would they, for example, 'need to refer to me as Pastor Jessie?'. I broke out into a sweat. I had the previous weekend been to a wedding of some Seventh Day Adventists, albeit in an Anglican Church, it was my first encounter with them and they were fabulous. However, I am not a Seventh Day Adventists. My contact with Americans is non-existent, dreadfully ignorant in fact. I know George Bush and now Sarah Palin, I've seen Michael Moore's documentaries, I'm not keen to be one. This enquiry into my credentials was the least of my worries. It was kindly meant. One man who shall be nameless but whom you have previously encountered with his Belgian/American ancestry and a wife from Hull was particularly unpleasant. Before admitting that he was 'picking on me', he grilled me mercilessly. Would I, he wanted to know, 'be preaching from a soap box on The Green'? Would I, he persisted, be 'taking Candlelit Church on tour and going global? Even this was preferable to the blank face and the 'whats that?'
Not only am I an object of mild but not particularly rivetted curiosity, it seems I am to be permanently associated with the one thing I would most have wanted to avoid. The Conservative American Right. Hallelujah Sisters!

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feeling ill

A migraine, a slight cold, a runny nose and my medication doesn't work too well. My Temporal Lobe epilepsy flares up, I get migraine-like symptoms and dis-orientation, a bit of paranoia and an inability to do anything but sleep. For me this is a nightmare, I become convinced that I am a breath away from being locked up in a psychiatric ward, I lose perspective on everything. Soon my medication will be doubled. I will never recover. I will never live a normal life again.
Of course, two days later, a lot of sleep and some migraleve and I am back to my usual self. It is hard to for adults who have lived with ill health in a traumatic way in childhood to understand that ill-health is a sporadic and ordinary part of life. It doesn't always progress or become very particular to you. It just has to be lived with for a few days or weeks. I have learned that the only helpful thing to do is ring a friend and check my perspective. That usually takes two days anyway by which time I am convinced that the friend will bundle me in a car and take me to a doctor/psychiatrist/behavioural therapist/you name it...So I am usually almost better before I ring the friend who says 'its normal', 'you have a migraine'.

My original introduction

This photo was taken by my husband Graham on Iona. It is important here because it represents the way in which my Mum's death and funeral offered me healing. It marks a point at which I have decided, as she did, to be fully myself and live every moment given to me as fruitfully as I can. As part of this I wanted to start a 'new thing' and start allowing people to see more of my writing and therefore live my life more openly.
This blog is a response to the insights so many shared at Mum's funeral. I discovered there that my Mum was so much more than simply my Mum. She was never a saint, had many flaws, she could be frustrating and difficult like me. But I realise that these things were tiny when balanced next to her capacity for living and for giving. What emerged from her funeral was an image of a woman whose appetite for life and for quality of life was remarkable. She was entirely herself with everyone, whatever the cost. She gave all that she had to the people she loved, she fed us, nurtured us and showed us that every detail of every day was a blessing.
I am giving you my writing as part of the fruits of my life and person in honour of her memory and continued presence in my life. It is a risk I am now willing to take. She has given me the courage to live my life boldly.
When my Mum was dying I went to the Cathedral and imagined her saying goodbye at the side of an expanse of water. In my imagination there was a boat waiting for her to depart. In my mind I urged her to get in her boat, turn her back on us all, never look back and hope for the light on the other side of the water.
The boat story of Jesus telling terrified disciples not to be afraid in the storm and calming the waves has always been comfort to me in the storms of my life. There are so many ways of looking at the symbolic meaning of a boat.
For me this photo speaks to me about a song called 'Lord you have come to the lakeside' and in it there is a line. 'Now my boat's left on the shoreline behind me; by your side, I will seek other seas.' It is a line which kept coming to me as a friend of mine sat at her Aunt's bedside in her final hours. I sang it for her and her partner as they said their goodbyes as a prayer for them, because I knew how much they liked it. I think it began to speak to me too. When I urged my Mum to the other shore it seemed that her boat was only her own and no one could be in it with her. In her death I do feel called to 'seek other seas' as a new beginning with which to honour her departing.

Books I'm reading & books I've just read

The New Black; Mourning and Melancholia by Daniel Leader
The Time Travellers Wife
Retribution by Maureen Duffy
The Summer Book by Tove Janson
Voice Over by Celine Curiol
Perfume by Patrick Siskund
Loads of Alan Bennett's writings
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Salmon Fishing in The Yemen
Engelby, Sebastian Faulks
The Lolipop Shoes; Joanne Harris
The Prospect of Heaven: Musings of an Enquiring Believer, Frederick Levison
The Courage to Connect; Becoming all we Can Be, Rosemary Lain-Priestley

About my Writing

My writing tends towards the poetic, it has also been described as filmic. It is intensely personal and seeped in Christian imagery and thinking. I think it is spiritual writing in that it is rooted in the belief that there is a God and that God is very real to us in this time and place on earth. I write because it is something I am unable to live without. I write because it is healing and therapeutic. I write out of instinct and because I am by nature 'a writer'. I write for myself and for others that I know and love. I write for specific occasions and for purposes as well as for its own sake. Writing is a pleasure for me.
I write sporadicallly and as the mood takes me, it is not a disciplined exercise but something which emerges from my soul when it needs to be created. I have been astonished to find that people around me need my writing. They ask for what I have written and they ask for more. This blog is an attempt to meet that demand, not because I feel pressured to do so, but because God has given me a gift and it is begging to be used. People are asking me to us this gift fruitfully.
I think my writing is healing in its nature, it is soulful and intimate, it reaches places within us which we do not understand and it sometimes moves people to tears. It doesn't seem that writing like this is a productive or lucrative affair. It is not a 'niche market', it is not designed for profit or thought through in any sense. This approach would disable it.

The Imagination of Trees